


Coming Home Again

by carafin



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, M/M, Mixed Media
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-15
Updated: 2017-10-15
Packaged: 2019-01-17 12:25:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12365757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carafin/pseuds/carafin
Summary: Yuuri, given to periodic bouts of paranoia, would often wonder if Viktor is, in fact, a Russian drug lord on the loose, seeking refuge in a nondescript town in America. This would explain a manner of things: his evasiveness whenever probed about his job; the way he’d unpredictably throw out incisive, thoughtful commentary about the morning news over breakfast; his expensive tastes in shirts, watches, and wallets alike; why he’d want to stay here with Yuuri, of all places, when the contents his wardrobe alone could probably afford him a year-long stay at any condominium of his choice in the trendiest part of town.Andthenhe goes on to discover that Viktor actually has a premium account on club penguin, and that his five penguins are named Peanut Wigglebutt, Luke skyhopper, Zing Zing, Otto Von Longdong, and Mooshoo Vegetable, and beats the idea to death in his head.





	Coming Home Again

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. the fic begins with a scene involving a medical emergency. insofar as i have tried to adhere to what is factually reasonable, please understand certain aspects of management have been trimmed away for the sake of brevity. as such, this fic is by no means an accurate depiction of both the disease and its management. if the technical bits might bore you, or if you foresee yourself being squicked, please skip ahead to "the next two hours".  
> 2\. detailed trigger warnings in the end note!  
> 3\. three quarters through the fic i realised that med school in america is a post-grad degree, which is inconsistent with what is written in this fic... which i apologise deeply for ORZ  
> 4\. credit for the bizarre pet names goes to this [list](http://dogtime.com/dog-health/general/21059-top-100-weird-dog-and-cat-pet-names-2014), i own nothing

 

 

 

 

Zandile,  
you do not need saving.  
Only reminding of who you are.

**Tapiwa Mugabe, _Zimbabwe_**

 

 

 

 

Katsuki Yuuri spends the first twelve hours of his twenty-third birthday wedged uncomfortably between a crying infant and a burly man who has no concept of personal space whatsoever, hovering some forty thousand feet above the North Atlantic Ocean, midway between Moscow and Detroit.

It’s a shame, really, because Yuuri usually  _likes_  being on a flight; he finds the experience soothing, if not enjoyable: the engine’s low constant hum, the endless expanse of cloud and sky, and the idea that he’s suspended in between some indefinite time and space, which is about the closest one can get to detaching oneself from reality. It’s… a refreshing change.  

Not that Yuuri is in desperate need of escapism, or anything of the sort. Yuuri’s twenty-three and healthy and able-bodied, he’s in his final-- _final_!--year of medical school, and he’s juggling two part-time jobs to pay his rent but he’s not living on the streets either. If anything, he’s just attended his second medical conference of the year in Moscow, presented his poster (“ _Relationship between Helicobacter Pylori eradication in chronic peptic ulcer disease and MALT lymphoma: A Review_ ”)--a culmination of six months of crunching data, more coffee than is humanly fathomable (and stomach-able), and, ironically enough, three stomach ulcers--to a bunch of eminent professionals, received a glowing letter of recommendation complete with rainbows and unicorns and the like from his mentor, and a sizeable research grant for his  _next_  project. He’s interning in one of the most reputable teaching hospitals in his nation. It’s just...

Yuuri squeezes his eyes shut; he has to report back to hospital by 11AM the next day, which leaves him with barely enough time to touch down, cab home, dump his luggage in his house, wash up, eat his first meal in twenty-four hours, and rush to the hospital (washing and eating optional.) This in turn leaves him with exactly three hours and thirty-two minutes of sleep, and no time for self-indulgent, whimsical bouts of self-pity.

“Happy birthday, Yuuri,” he murmurs to himself; the statement is entirely devoid of irony and self-pity. It’s pretty depressing, as far as birthdays go, but Yuuri has spent his twenty-second birthday working a twelve hour shift in 7-11 and his twenty-first in a dingy lab clawing his way through three hundred pages of data, so it’s not like he has any semblance of a birthday tradition to uphold, anyway.

This is how Katsuki Yuuri spends the first twelve hours of his twenty-third birthday drifting fitfully in and out of sleep. As it turns out, it’s the  _better_  half of his birthday.

 

 

“If there is any medical doctor on board, please make yourself known to cabin crew as soon as possible.”

It’s a bad dream, Yuuri tells himself. It’s probably a culmination of the stress from work, the harrowing wails of the baby next to him, and some repressed childhood phobia of flying, from all the times Mari-nee-chan picked him up when they were kids and pretended to fly him like an airplane. He should probably go back to sleep.

“Attention all passengers: if there is any medical doctor on board, please make yourself known to cabin crew  _as soon as possible_.”

On his left, the baby stirs and lets out a wail reminiscent of a pterodactyl being fed into a mixing truck. The man on his right is likewise jolted awake by the sudden commotion, and almost smashes his skull into Yuuri’s face in the process.

 _It’s okay_ , Yuuri tells himself, trying to quell the queasiness that’s stirring in the pits of his stomach.  _It’s okay_. He’s just a student. A final year student with less than eight months to being a doctor in name, but still a  _student_. It’s not his duty--it’s not even his  _right_ \--to stand up and declare himself. He isn’t even legally covered by a practicing insurance, and if anything goes wrong his career would’ve ended even before it’d started.

The message is repeated thrice, then stops. Yuuri allows himself a moment of relief. There are four hundred-odd passengers on the plane; statistically speaking, surely  _someone_  there is a doctor.

“Would  _all_  medical doctors please identify yourself to the cabin crew  _immediately_.”

There’s a heightened tone of urgency in the new message, and before Yuuri’s mind even registers what he’s doing, he’s made his way to the nearest flight attendant hovering anxiously along the aisle.

“I’m a doctor-in-training,” Yuuri tells her. “If there isn’t another doctor on board, I could help.”

The flight attendant’s panic-stricken face gives way to visible relief, which confirms Yuuri’s worst fear: he’s probably the one best equipped to handle the emergency amongst everyone on the plane, a thought that is terrifying on a hundred different levels. He’s led by the attendant--and the interested gaze of about a hundred passengers--into the first class cabin, where a commotion is taking place at the end of the aisle. An elderly man is having a seizure on the floor; his arms and legs are jerking, his eyes are rolled upwards towards the ceiling, and he’s frothing at the mouth.

Yuuri walks in just in time to stop a well-meaning passenger from stuffing a piece of handkerchief into the man’s mouth.

“You can’t put anything into his mouth or he’ll choke,” Yuuri tells the baffled man. He’s moving on pure instinct, mind-numbing fear giving way to the memory of countless hours spent in the ER. “I’m gonna need you to turn him to his side--on a count of three--”

Yuuri takes a few seconds to assess the man: he’s having a seizure, but he doesn’t appear to be cyanosed, his pulse is strong, and his skin is not feverish to touch.

“How long has he been seizing?” Yuuri asks the flight attendant, who returns his question with a blank look.

“He’s been shaking away intermittently for the past fifteen minutes or so,” a young man--a foreigner--next to Yuuri offers. “I was sitting next to him when he started to shake.” 

“We need to give him oxygen  _right now_ ,” Yuuri says, voice coming out all hoarse and choked but  _it doesn't matter so long as he gets things done_. “Can someone get me a blood pressure set, and a pulse oximeter. And, um, a thermometer. And you,” Yuuri says, turning to the foreigner, “look through the guy’s bag for any pills or tablets or any meds you can find.”

The next few minutes play out like  _hours_. Yuuri holds the man down by his side, praying fervently that the seizure will spontaneously abort. The man’s shaking and shaking and it feels like it’ll never end, he’s foaming and spitting out flecks of drool onto Yuuri’s shirt and all over his pants, and his lips are turning purplish-blue. It’s like the recurrent nightmares Yuuri’s been having over the past year, nightmares of people dying on him, except this isn’t a dream, isn’t it, this is a man whose flesh feels warm and horribly real under Yuuri’s fingers, all slick sweat and throbbing pulse and--

“I found his medication bag!” The foreigner announces, as he squeezes through the crowd and dumps a small Ziploc bag into Yuuri’s arms. Yuuri hastily shakes the contents out of the bag: a few tablets of aspirin, some antibiotics, and an insulin syringe.

“He's on insulin,” Yuuri says aloud, horrified. “ _Someone pass me a glucose meter_.”

The flight attendant comes back with a huge box of medical supplies, fishes out a glucose meter and pricks the man’s fingers. Within seconds, numbers flash on the screen:  _1.3_. The guy’s blood sugar is dangerously low, and the only way to remedy that is to gain venous access and push the dextrose solution into the man’s veins. Yuuri’s heart sinks at the prospect of setting a plug on someone who is having an active seizure.

He prepares the needles, staunchly ignoring the way his hands are trembling so obviously that they’re probably shaking harder than the elderly man himself. He waits for the flight attendant to hold the man down, takes a deep breath, and slides the needle into the man’s arms. It takes a few seconds, but blood trickles out of the cannula, which means that he’d hit the target. He flushes the dextrose into the vein, and waits with bated breath.

When the man finally stops seizing a minute later, Yuuri almost faints from the surge of relief.

The next two hours pass in a blur. The plane makes an emergency landing at a nearby airport, and the patient is attended to immediately by a group of doctors and nurses armed with a bag of medical supplies. Yuuri is thanked profusely and effusively: first by the medical team, then by the flight attendants, then by the pilot himself. By then, he’s entered such a profound state of numb shock that he doesn’t really register what they’re saying, and before he knows it he’s been shepherded to his newly upgraded business class seat, as a gesture of thanks from the cabin crew.

He’s so out of it that it takes him thirty seconds to register that the man in his neighbouring seat is attempting to strike up a conversation, that there are actual  _words_  coming out of him, and he’s not just opening and closing his mouth for the fun of it. It takes him  _another_  thirty seconds to realise that the stranger is, in fact, the foreigner who’d helped him find the Ziploc bag of medications earlier.

“…and you looked so pale you were practically  _translucent_  and your hands were shaking so badly but you actually got the needle into his veins,  _amazing-_ -“

“I sorry, what, _sorry_?” Yuuri says.

The stranger grins at him. Yuuri has about ten functioning brain cells left after the traumatic ordeal, give or take three, but he vaguely registers that the stranger is--striking. Floppy hair, piercing green eyes. His features are delicate and well-defined; illuminated by the dim cabin light, his side profile seems almost elfin-like.

“I said, you were practically shitting your pants back there,” the stranger informs him, cheerfully. “I’m Viktor; what’s your name?”

“Katsuki Yuuri,” Yuuri says, just as the flight attendant approaches Yuuri with a menu in her hand.

“Would you like a drink, sir?” She asks Yuuri, eyes widening ever-so-slightly, as if she were--god forbid--in  _awe_  of him.

“I, coffee, I mean, coffee would be nice, thanks.” Yuuri’s state of petrification from the earlier excitement inexplicably gives way to complete and utter exhaustion; he's so very tired.

On second thought, though, coffee's probably not going to cut it. Yuuri changes his mind just as the flight attendant is walking back to the trolley, raises his arms and says: “Actually, um, do you serve alcoholic beverages here?”

 

 

This is how, an hour and a few drinks later, Yuuri decides that it is  _absolutely vital_ that he pours out the entire sob story of his twenty-third birthday to Viktor, no details spared.

“You know what I like about my birthday?  _Nothing_ ,” Yuuri says, swinging his arm for emphasis. “I mean, like, I’m not even asking for a cake or a present or a party here, I just want to go home and shower, and sleep, and not freak out about accidentally killing someone, is that too much to ask?”

“No, not at all,” Viktor agrees, sounding very amicable. Yuuri  _likes_  him already.

“I get nightmares about these things all the time. About being a shit doctor,” Yuuri continues, because Viktor’s nodding like he’s  _actually_  interested in what Yuuri has to say. “It’s awful. Phichit says it’s the coffee…”

Now that he's started, Yuuri decides that he doesn't actually want to stop. Why should he? The Viktor guy looks plenty interested, and hell, Yuuri deserves this. It's his birthday, cut him some slack, let this poor guy  _whine_  a little. “…I  _love_  coffee. I would give it to myself through an IV drip if I could…”

“…Phichit’s my ex-roommate… he’s on a year-long exchange trip to Beijing University…”

“…Miss him so much, and the landlady’s jacked up the rent price thrice because I can’t find a roommate to replace him…”

“…I like your face… it’s a really nice face…”

“…not a single restaurant in Detroit that serves decent katsudon!... they… they even screw up rice, I mean how do you do it, how do you screw up rice, you have to actually  _put in effort_  to screw up something like  _rice_ …”

“…do you know how many bowls of katsudons my school fees can… can buy me? I’ll give you a hint, the answer is, like,  _five_  digits…”

“…happy birthday to me… happy birthday to me… happy birthday to Yuuri…”

“…hope the man survives… I really hope he does… oh god…”

“…was so scared… I really thought I was going to kill him…”

“…shouldn’t have come… didn’t want to attend the conference… but they said the trip would be subsidised…”

“…Phichit’s Instagram is great… but there’s a video of me… chased by geese… in park…  _not_  great…”

“…would skank a baby for some decent katsudon…”

“…lost my first kiss to my grandfather’s parrot… truth or dare with my cousins…”

“… _hate_  public speaking… when I speak to crowd… imagine everyone around me is a katsudon…”

“…Vicchan… vet said it was a bad infection… cried for  _weeks_ … didn’t even get to…”

“…seriously…how do you…  _face_ …so well…”

The plane lurches. Yuuri’s head jerks at the abrupt movement and he looks out of the window, only to see rows after rows of neon orange light lined along the edges of an airport runway.

“Ladies and gentleman,” comes the flight attendant’s pleasant voice through the PA system, which registers as a vague, distant echo in Yuuri’s mind, “We have arrived at our destination. The time in Detroit is 5.16 AM and the weather forecast for today is….”

Very, very slowly, Yuuri turns his head back from the window to Viktor.

Who is looking at him. Very intently, with the slightest hint of an--amused? Bemused?--smile on his face.

Yuuri opens his mouth, tries to speak--

-and then he gags and empties the entire content of his stomach onto his own lap.

 

 

Yuuri doesn’t remember much of his trip back to his apartment, except that he is half-led, half-dragged by Viktor through immigration, through the airport, and into a cab. He gives his address to the driver after some prompting, and before he knows it he’s at the lift lobby of his apartment, flanked between his puke-stained luggage and--he’s seized by a sudden pang of mortification--an amused looking Viktor.

By then the amount of alcohol circulating in his blood has reduced to a level low enough for him to arrive at the following realisations:

  1. He’d just spent three hours on a plane ride blathering like a an idiot to a complete stranger; and
  2. said stranger is ridiculously attractive; and
  3. oh god, is that his own puke on the guy’s shirt?
  4. once he sobers up, there will probably not be a lake deep enough in all of America for him to fling himself into.



“I, I’ll manage from here,” Yuuri says, hastily. His head is  _pounding_. “Thank you--thank you so much--I’m  _deeply_  sorry--“

Mercifully, the lift door opens, and Yuuri takes a deep bow, spends a few seconds trying to re-orientate his poor, throbbing head, and makes a dash for it. He isn’t proud of himself, he really isn’t, but if Viktor follows him and witnesses the utter state of disarray that is his apartment, he will become the first person in the history of medicine to  _literally_   _die_  from embarrassment. They’ll probably name the condition after him, the Katsuki Yuuri syndrome, and his family name will be sullied forever and it’ll be all his fault-

Yuuri drags himself through his door, collapses onto his sofa, and lets the day’s exhaustion and horror give way to eight blissful hours of sleep.

 

 

Yuuri wakes up to a massive hangover, five voicemails from home, two missed calls from Otabek (his classmate back in hospital), and thirty messages from Phichit, which starts off as a string of birthday related emojis that quickly descends into increasingly worried messages asking after Yuuri’s whereabouts.

 _Hey_ , he texts Phichit, and within two seconds his phone is ringing.

“YUURI KATSUKI,” booms Phichit’s voice from the other side of the line, which is about five thousand decibels too loud, and Yuuri almost rolls off the sofa in shock.

“Please don’t do that,” he whimpers feebly into the phone.

“YOUR PLANE WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE LANDED FIFTEEN HOURS AGO,” Phichit continues, unrepentant. “I WAS SUPPOSED TO BIRTHDAY SKYPE YOU-“

Phichit, who’d been worried that Yuuri would spend his entire birthday alone eating canned soup in the medical library, had forced Yuuri to promise to birthday skype him before the day ended. Yuuri is seized by a wave of guilt, which quickly transforms into horror as the events of the past night floods back into his mind. He lets out a groan and buries his face into the sofa.

“YUURI-”

“There was… there was a delay on my flight.” Yuuri takes a deep breath. “Someone had a seizure and I had to attend to him and it was--it was awful, Phichit, I thought he was going to die,” Yuuri says, and he’s beyond mollified talking about last night’s events aloud, but Phichit deserves to know. “I--he didn’t die in the end, he’s safe now, thank god, but I freaked out really badly and got drunk on the plane and someone had to help bring me home.”

There’s silence on the line for about ten seconds. Yuuri realises, with a fresh pang of guilt, that it’s late afternoon in Detroit, which means it’s probably 3AM in Beijing, where Phichit is. And Phichit really, really doesn’t deserve this.

“I mean--it’s fine, I’m okay now, just a little hungover but that’s--“

“Yuuri.” Phichit’s voice is kinder now, almost soft, and Yuuri refuses to cry.  _Refuses_. “That must’ve been awful.”

“I mean--yeah, it was, but it’s okay,” Yuuri says, and staunchly ignores how hollow his voice sounds in his empty apartment. “I--I just don’t want to think about it now.”

“I’ve got something for you to take your mind off things,” Phichit offers cheerfully, after a moment’s silence. Yuuri can almost  _hear_  the grin in his voice. “Why don’t you take a look at your Instagram?”

Yuuri spends the next fifteen minutes scrolling through the series of photos Phichit has uploaded on Instagram starring Yuuri, captioned with effusive birthday messages, each more enthusiastic than the last. Yuuri finds it in him to laugh in spite of everything, in spite of yesterday’s tragic series of events. He likes every single photo, even the candid ones, and the ones where he’s looking at the camera but smiling funny. He ends up feeling... well, not  _good_ , but at least alright, for the rest of what would otherwise have been an intolerable day.

 

 

Yuuri doesn’t think about Viktor for the rest of the week.

It’s not that he’s in denial, or anything--he’s got a ton of schoolwork to catch up on, journal articles to read, and an ever-growing mountain of laundry waiting for him underneath the mouldy kitchen sink. More important is the particular mindset Yuuri has learned to adopt with regard to his drunken escapades: there’s the drunk, effervescent, sociable Yuuri who weeps unabashedly into the arms of complete strangers and makes friends with anything that so much as crawls; then there’s the sober Yuuri, who stammers when he talks to the mailman and who never gets his pizza order right the first time. As far as sober Yuuri is concerned, drunk Yuuri is another entity altogether, a completely distinct persona whose character is so unfathomable and farfetched from Yuuri's that it would be like contemplating the existence of an alien.

Okay, so maybe he’s a little in denial. Just a little.

The point is, Yuuri might be socially inept but he isn’t socially  _oblivious_. He’s been brought up to be courteous and considerate and to do decent-human-being things like give up his seat to pregnant women on the bus. He knows that sobbing about his entire life story for three hours and throwing up on a complete stranger and  _then_  having said stranger bring him back home is so far beyond the line of what is socially acceptable, he might as well have declared himself a pariah and admitted to being raised by a pack of wolves. Which is why Yuuri’s only option is to either melt from the shame into a puddle of shapeless Yuuri-flavoured goo, or try really, really hard  _not_  to think about it so that he can put the massive embarrassment behind him and move on with his life.

The result of his extreme denial is that when Viktor  _actually_  shows up at his doorstep two weeks later with three large suitcases in tow, Yuuri’s first response is to dismiss him as a terrible hallucination that is both the by-product of his guilty conscience and too little sleep. And then shut the door in Viktor’s face.

His first thought is:  _I need to sleep_.

His second thought is _: a figment of my imagination shouldn’t be able to hammer on the door like_  that.

The hammering continues for thirty seconds, followed by radio silence. When Yuuri opens the door again, he finds Viktor rearranging Yuuri’s shoe rack.

“What are you doing,” Yuuri splutters.

“Putting my shoes on the shoe rack,” Viktor says, cheerfully. “I’ve got a bad back, so I’ll be taking the top row. I hope you won’t mind?”

“I,” Yuuri says.

“I even brought us dinner! And drinks! We need to celebrate our first night together as housemates.”

“You housemate,” Yuuri says. Eloquence being one of his many talents.

“Didn’t your landlady tell you?” Viktor beams at him, and this is all Yuuri’s fault because he’s been avoiding the landlady’s calls like the plague. “ _I’m going to be your new housemate_.”

 

 

Viktor… is a disaster.

A correction: Viktor  _himself_  isn’t a disaster. He’s more put together than Yuuri can ever hope to be; the  _fire hydrant_  outside Yuuri’s apartment is more put together than Yuuri can ever hope to be. The point being, Viktor isn’t a disaster but the fact that he should suddenly be involved in Yuuri’s life, living together with him as a roommate,  _is_.

Viktor knows everything about Yuuri: from his rocky financial status; to his deepest, darkest, most guarded fears that no one else is privy to, not even Phichit; to the name of his first dog.

All Yuuri knows about Viktor, one hour into their-- _disastrous_!--second meeting, is that Viktor wears size eight shoes and has a penchant for talking in superlatives and eats  _a lot_. He steadily makes his way through three servings of store-bought spaghetti; across the table, Yuuri woodenly shoves pasta into his mouth, so distracted that he almost misses and hits his nose with the fork three times.

And then Viktor announces that he will be his housemate for  _six months_. Again, a recipe for unmitigated disaster! Yuuri notices, not without a fresh wave of alarm, that his life will soon feature heavily in 1. Viktor and 2. disasters.

“I was just looking for a place to stay in Detroit to take a break from work and… settle some other stuff,” Viktor says. “Then we were on that flight together, and you told me that you were looking for a roommate! What  _luck_! What  _serendipity_!”

 _What a nightmare_ , Yuuri thinks, but barely refrains from saying.

After dinner, Yuuri does the dishes in a daze. He shows Viktor around the house, teaches him how to work the heater and washing machine, and offers to bring Viktor around the neighbourhood over the next few days. After that, upon Viktor’s insistence, they sit at the balcony and sip sweet potato shochu. It’s all very surreal.

“I look forward to living with you~” Viktor hums, faced flushed pink with alcohol, which throws Yuuri off for a moment. It’s not that Yuuri thinks of himself as some ogre who deserves to have eggs thrown at him, of course; Yuuri is a considerate housemate, and, when given the choice, will always go out of his way to avoid imposing on others. He just finds it unfathomable that the promise of his company should incite anything other than a lukewarm response from anybody. But Viktor seems so genuinely happy, and so contented, that Yuuri just smiles shyly, if a little hesitantly, and nods.

And that’s that.

 

 

Viktor, Yuuri decides a few weeks later, isn’t so much  _mysterious_  as he is plain  _unpredictable_. There is no pattern to his actions; his thought process, erratic and wildly interesting, is not so much a puzzle as it is plain puzzling. He’d insist on having lunch together with Yuuri, whine like a petulant baby until Yuuri concedes, then go on to offer incisive, thoughtful advice whenever Yuuri brings up school related problems over a meal. He has a habit of scribbling random phrases in Russian that Yuuri does not understand, over whatever scrap pieces of paper he can lay his hands on: the back of grocery lists, bits of paper napkins, and drug store receipts. When asked, he’d claim that he was  _collecting inspiration_  for his work, but proceed to make no further comment as to what sort of  _work_  it is. He’d pen his thoughts down as and when inspiration strikes, and then absentmindedly leave them in ridiculous places: next to a bunch of carrots in the fridge, stuck onto the toilet mirror with congealed toothpaste, and in  _Yuuri’s bathroom slippers_. He’d shed silvery hair all over the sofa and whine and bitch endlessly about having to clean it up, and then willingly whip up scrumptious seven course dinners at random, for no reason other than to “celebrate our eighty-ninth day as roommates together.”

For better or for worse, Viktor’s arrival changes everything.

In a way, it’s to be expected. Before Viktor it’d been Phichit, and before Phichit Yuuri had been living alone during his freshmen year of college. Then Phichit’d moved in, which changed everything. Yuuri thinks that he would never exchange his memories with Phichit for anything in the world--the late night horror movie marathons; the tureens of impossibly spicy Thai curry they’d slurp when winter drew nearer and the nights grew colder; being coerced into doing straight-out illegal things like breaking into old, abandoned warehouses and getting chased around by wild dogs ‘for the gram’. Phichit would gaze at Yuuri with this doe-eyed, pleading look--and Yuuri, dammit, was  _weak_  to the pleading look--and say things like, “you gotta visit this cafe with me, Yuuri, they’ve got the cutest latte art that  _needs_  to be on my Instagram”, or “I heard they just erected this huge statue of a three-headed giraffe in the park, I’m begging you to  _please_  just leave the med library for  _one_  hour and help me take a photo with it--”

Viktor, however, is different. Viktor isn’t so much concerned about letting Yuuri into his life as he is about getting into  _Yuuri’s_  life, which baffles Yuuri thoroughly. He’d pester Yuuri with questions about his favourite band, his day at work, his view on whether there is more than one correct way of eating a chocolate cupcake, and if the colour orange is grossly underrated. He is utterly shameless about pleading, wheedling, and--when push comes to shove--coercing Yuuri into spending time together. Rather than being put-off after the whole incidence on the plane, Viktor seems to be perversely interested in gathering even more useless information about Yuuri’s life, down to every small, horrifying detail. 

It scares Yuuri at first--not so much the interest in itself, but the terrible queasiness in his gut telling him that  _surely_  Viktor will get bored of him.  _Surely_  his interest will tire eventually. Stories of his patients might be interesting the first, or second, or third time, but eventually it’s going to end up being the same old. And so Yuuri braces himself, over and over, for an inevitability that doesn’t come.

It takes Yuuri a while to get used to it, to volunteer details about his day without being prompted to. It takes him many, many weeks to stop peering up from his rice bowl every so often, to check and see if Viktor’s still listening to him (and realise with no small degree of shock that Viktor is, he always is.) The stories roll off is tongue: haltingly at first, then with increasing ease and comfort as the days go by. He finds his fear slowly being replaced by a small, tentative sort of hope, the kind that makes him want to notice and remember things he’d never have otherwise given much attention to: a sprig of wildflowers peering through the cracked pavements lining the entrance of his school campus; the hilarious mannerisms of the ward clerk in the paediatric unit; an interesting conversation between two parrot owners that he overheads on the train ride home.

Autumn passes before Yuuri realises; winter comes, and then spring, the days curving gently into a long, winding road.

 

 

Curiously enough: for all his enthusiastic recollections of his childhood in Russia, Viktor is uncharacteristically reticent about the details of whatever job he had prior to Detroit. He’s also strangely dismissive about his college experience, a stark contrast to how he’d willingly spend hours regaling colourful tales of Makkachin, his pet dog back home, at _length_.

“I worked in finance for a while,” Viktor would say, when asked about his job. “But it’s not… it’s not anything exciting, so I’m just working freelance right now.” And then he’d abruptly change the subject. Whenever Yuuri’s busy in school or at work--which, ever since Viktor’s arrival, isn’t nearly as often as he should--Viktor would spend his time alone typing on his laptop, only to slam it shut the first instant Yuuri comes back to the apartment.

Yuuri, given to periodic bouts of paranoia, would often wonder if Viktor is, in fact, a Russian drug lord on the loose, seeking refuge in a nondescript town in America. This would explain a manner of things: his evasiveness whenever probed about his job; the way he’d unpredictably throw out incisive, thoughtful commentary about the morning news over breakfast; his expensive tastes in shirts, watches, and wallets alike; why he’d want to stay here with Yuuri, of all places, when the contents his wardrobe alone could probably afford him a year-long stayat any condominium of his choice in the trendiest part of town.

And then he’d discover that Viktor actually has a premium account on club penguin, and that his  _five_  penguins are named Peanut Wigglebutt, Luke skyhopper, Zing Zing, Otto Von Longdong, and Mooshoo Vegetable, and beat the idea to death in his head.

The point is: if Viktor doesn’t want to talk about it, doesn’t want to discuss his work with anyone, then Yuuri sure as hell isn’t going to probe. It sounds almost as though Viktor’s navigating through some sort of premature mid-life crisis, a sentiment that Yuuri  _thinks_  he understands. If anything, Yuuri has spent the entirety of his medical school career feeling like some sort of fraud waiting to be called out, like someone might march up to him one day to tell him that he doesn’t deserve to graduate or become a doctor. It’s almost a shock to realise that even someone like Viktor isn’t immune to--if not crippling self-doubt, then at least some sort of work related apprehension. The point is, Yuuri quickly learns to steer the conversation away from Viktor’s work, and gives Viktor all the space he needs to deal.

Yuuri would know; Yuuri wears self-doubt like a second skin, has never known any other emotion more intimately his whole life.

 

 

Phichit thinks that Viktor is the best thing that has happened to Yuuri since sliced bread. (Barring the one incident in the neighbourhood park where Yuuri had been getting chased around by wild geese, and rather than try to save him Phichit had spent the entire time taking a video of it to be uploaded to Instagram, which later garnered a record-breaking number of comments, like the true friend that he is.)

“At least I know you won’t starve without me,” Phichit tells him, and he sounds so  _serious_  about the statement that Yuuri is almost indignant. It’s one thing to eat exclusively out of cans and spend more time in the med library than anywhere else combined; it’s another thing to have your ex-roommate, who is two years younger than you, fuss over you like your  _mother_.

 “I wasn’t going to starve,” Yuuri says, defensively. “I can take care of myself!”

Phichit assumes a most long-suffering expression and says, in a  _terrible_  imitation of Yuuri, “My name is Yuuri Katsuki! I invented six different ways of prying my eyelids open with a toothpick!”

“And--and I can cook!”

“ _Have you been letting yourself near the stove, Yuuri_ ,” Phichit says in genuine horror. “ _You swore a blood oath never to do it again after the Unspeakable Frittata Incident of 2015--_ “

Yuuri laughs in spite of himself. Viktor is a wickedly good cook, a fact that is as surprising as it is patently unfair. “I haven’t, but Viktor… cooks for both of us.” Which, he realises a moment later after Phichit assumes a smug expression on his face, is probably counterproductive to his argument. Whatever his argument was, anyway.

“Best thing since sliced bread,” Phichit declares, triumphant. “Does this guy have an Instagram? Snapchat? We should totally follow each other.”

“He doesn’t,” Yuuri says, horrified, and changes the subject immediately. He prays that he will not live to see the day Viktor watches the video of him running across a field of daisies with tears streaming down his face and three ferocious geese hot on his heels.

 

 

It’s hardly surprising, then, that Viktor’s effects on Yuuri carry beyond their time spent together in the apartment. Chris leans over to Yuuri during one of their infamous Monday night group study sessions (during which everyone camps in one of the seminar rooms in the med faculty, blast playlists with psychedelic noises on loop for hours on end because JJ believes that music of a certain frequency would greatly enhance their powers of concentration, and drinks their body weight thrice over in caffeine), takes a deep sniff, cups Yuuri’s face in his hand and declares, “This is the scent… of  _vigorous young love_.”

There are so many things wrong with the gesture that Yuuri’s mind temporarily short circuits, and he’s left to gape at Chris like an amnesiac goldfish. Across the table, Otabek raises his eyebrows in a way that makes his opinion on Chris’ disruptive behaviour abundantly clear.

“I--what the hell are you talking about, Chris,” Yuuri wails, because he is only one-quarter into his two-hundred page reading but has already downed half his stash of extra strong coffee, which means that he’s grossly miscalculated his workload-to-caffeine-ratio, which means that he cannot afford to waste any more brain cells right now.

Chris points an accusing finger at Yuuri’s wholesome packed dinner of beef stroganoff, quinoa salad, and cutely shaped tamago maki. “For four years you subsisted on foul smelling canned chowder, Yuuri, and now you’re bringing these--these homemade packed dinners to school-- _who is she, Yuuri, and where did you find her_?”

“Y’know, it could just be her mom,” Sara quips brightly, from her half-reclined position on her inflatable beanbag.

Chris fishes out a handwritten note tucked underneath the bento box, and reads the contents aloud before Yuuri has the chance to snatch it away from him. “’Dear Yuuri’,” he says, oblivious as to Yuuri’s frantic pawing. “’I hope you will enjoy the dinner I made for you. Love, Viktor.’ Do you think this is his  _mom_?”

“He’s my roommate,” Yuuri tries to justify, but Chris is  _merciless_.

“It isn’t just the dinner, Yuuri,” Chris says. “You’ve been walking around with this--with this joyful  _glow_  on you, it’s ridiculous, can you just tell us already, I haven’t had any action in months and I have a  _physical_   _need_  to live vicariously through your experiences--“

Because the entire world is conspiring against him, Yuuri’s phone starts to buzz at the exact moment, and the caller ID shows: Viktor.

Chris looks so disgustingly scandalised, Yuuri wishes fervently for his head to swell up and explode. He excuses himself from the room while staunchly ignoring the way everyone is gaping at him (with the exception of Otabek, who has resumed poring over his books after stealthily cranking up the music in an attempt to drown out the conversation.)

“Hey,” Yuuri breathes into the phone. “What’s up?”

“Yuuri,” comes Viktor’s cheerful voice from the other side of the line, and even through the fuzzy static--the reception’s pretty poor in the building--his voice comes across as almost fond. “Nothing much, I was trying to find a scrap paper I’d left in the storage cupboard and I came across your family photo album, I hope you don’t mind me looking”--he says this all in a single breath, and continues before Yuuri can interject--“Yuuri, why didn’t you tell me how big a crybaby you were, you were crying in half the photos, then there’s one with you and the dog, and the one with you wearing  _a baby dress_ , oh my god Yuuri you’re  _adorable_.”

“Viktor,” Yuuri says haplessly, torn between feeling embarrassed about being called adorable, and also  _utter mortification_. “Did you just call me to tell me that you saw a couple of photos?”

“Those aren’t just photos, they’re  _your_   _baby photos_ ,” Viktor says, and for some bizarre reason he sounds almost proud. “And yes, that’s all! Have a good study session!” And he hangs up, just like that.

Yuuri puts the phone down slowly.

He thinks: Viktor calls him just to tell him that his baby photos are cute. He thinks: Viktor cracks his knuckles when he’s bored and yawns  _nonstop_  when he’s sleepy. His bedhead is the cutest and most ridiculous thing ever. He thinks: Viktor listened to his drunken tirade on the plane, probably had Yuuri’s puke inadvertently splashed onto him, and still doesn’t think of Yuuri any less for it.

 _Viktor_.

Yuuri doesn’t think about anything else for the rest of the night.

 

 

It’s almost three AM when Yuuri reaches home; Viktor is curled up like a cat in the living room, long limbs sprawled across their tiny sofa.

“… was waiting for you,” Viktor says blearily, and makes a tiny whining noise as the light from the corridor spills into the living room. Yuuri closes the door hastily. “You’re late.”

“I know,” Yuuri tells him. He drapes a spare blanket over Viktor and--for a long, quiet moment--watches the gentle rise and fall of Viktor’s silhouette amidst the darkness.

 

 

He’s in love with Viktor Nikiforov.

The newfound knowledge settles upon Yuuri like some sort of persistent fog, makes him feel giddy the whole day. It’s not like he’s never had a crush in his life, and it’s not like he’s never dated or made out with other boys before. But Viktor’s the only person who has seen both drunk Yuuri at his very worst, and meek Yuuri at his most mundane and banal. He makes Yuuri feel like--if not the most interesting person in the world, then at least someone worthy of interest.

Here’s the thing: Yuuri’s existence is not an exercise in superlatives, is not interesting in the least. He’s got average looks, average hobbies, an average existence; he takes the concept of  _average_  to an art form. Sure, he’s got a handful of accomplishments, but these don’t come easily or naturally to him.

Viktor, however, is different. If mankind ever developed a scale for perfection, it would probably begin with Yuuri and end with Viktor, two polar ends of a spectrum. Girls on the streets stop in their steps to gawk openly at Viktor, without him ever having to try; the right kind of smile, it’d be boys instead. Viktor is decked from head to foot in tasteful, branded clothes; he carries with him an aristocratic grace that that is impossible to stifle, even when he’s doing something as ridiculous as rummaging for leftover pizza in the fridge at 2AM in the morning. He turns on his impossible charm at the drop of a hat; he can be ruthlessly perceptive when he wants to be.

And yet, despite it all: Viktor asks after Yuuri day after day, laps the information up like it’s the most interesting thing in the world. He clings onto every word Yuuri says over dinner, and asks Yuuri things like “how’d your practicum go” and “how was dinner with your classmates”, like he cares enough to remember whenever Yuuri has a test, or a dinner event; like he cares at all.

For this reason, Yuuri allows himself the self-indulgent thought that, perhaps, just  _maybe_ , there is a slight chance that Viktor might be interested in being something more than just… platonic (if extremely close, and extremely domesticated) roommates.

He has no idea how to go about confirming this.

The problem isn’t that Viktor is noncommittal. Viktor is, if anything, remarkably vocal about what he does and does not like. His favourite colour is teal, and he hates waking up at any time that is  _not_  between 7AM and 8.30AM in the morning. He likes playing crosswords, but he wears  _plastic gloves_  when he does them because he hates getting his hand stained by newspaper ink. He has, on more than three occasions, declared his undying love for sweet potato shouchu. He is deeply affronted by the concept of wearing shoes in the apartment.

Herein lies the issue: Viktor likes Yuuri, a fact that Viktor has made abundantly clear. But it’s one thing to know that Viktor likes him, and another thing entirely to be assured that he places above an alcoholic beverage amongst The Extensive List Of Things Viktor Nikiforov Likes. (Yuuri has no idea how to go around affirming this; perhaps he could sneak a multiple choice question in between Viktor’s daily crosswords? Q. Pick your favourite item out of the following list: A. Crossword puzzles B. Katsuki Yuuri C. Teal D. Sweet potato shouchu.)

Thankfully for Yuuri, concealing all and any form of inner turmoil is the best, if only, talent that he has cultivated in his five years spent in America. And if he feels like someone just made him swallow fifty angry porcupines that are hell bent on shredding him up to a million pieces on the inside, he continues his day as though nothing has happened, nope, no life-changing realisations whatsoever. If Viktor spends the entire evening draping his arm around Yuuri’s shoulder, teasing Yuuri while he tries to study for his test, Yuuri will smile and pretend like nothing is wrong, even if he wants nothing more than to run to the fish tank and immerse his entire head into it. If Viktor packs Yuuri a lunchbox and asks, playfully, for a kiss, Yuuri will give his usual embarrassed laugh, and not spontaneously combust into ten billion pieces of carbon atoms.

It’s a ridiculous limbo that Yuuri’s trapped himself it, but it all becomes moot two weeks later, when a journalist knocks on Yuuri’s door, and Yuuri will stand, stock still, as everything descends into hell.

 

 

So: it’s 10AM on a Saturday morning when a bespectacled young man comes knocking on Yuuri’s door, asking for a certain Viktor Nikiforov.

“He’s out running errands today,” Yuuri says, feeling a little thrown off because he’s never known Viktor to have any visitors in his six months in Detroit. “You are…?”

“I’m Richard, from The Daily Detroit,” the man says. “Are you Mr. Nikiforov’s roommate?”

“I am--but why are you--“ On hearing Yuuri’s reply, Richard’s expression suddenly shifts from politely neutral to interested, as in the  _I-look-like-I-want-to-eat-your-liver-like-a-creepy-predator_ variant of interested. Oh god, Viktor’s really a Russian drug lord, isn’t he? This is where it all goes to hell. Yuuri’s mother had him swear a blood oath never to do drugs in America, which he’s abided to staunchly but it’s all moot now because he’s gone and screwed everything up spectacularly for himself, what with having a drug lord as a roommate and then developing a huge crush on him to boot--

“May I have your name?” Richard asks, brandishing out a large notepad.

“Katsuki Yuuri,” Yuuri says, and immediately regrets not coming up with a fake name when he sees Richard scribbling it down on his notepad.

“Is it true that Mr. Nikiforov has abandoned his career in academia for good? Does he really intend to condemn himself to writing  _novels_  for the rest of his life? Is he not going to give MIT a second chance? Is academia going to lose one of its greatest economists of our time?”

Yuuri clutches at his head. His poor, throbbing head.

“Viktor. Is. A famous economist?”

 “Mr. Katsuki,” Richard says, and  _he’s_  the one looking baffled now, “are you aware that your roommate is the youngest professor ever nominated for the Nobel Prize in Economics?”

 

 

 **Viktor Nikiforov**  
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 **Viktor Nikiforov**  (25 December 1989 - ) is a Russian economist, mathematician, and writer. Best known for his discovery of the Nikiforov paradox and its role in applied mathematics, Nikiforov has won numerous awards in the field of economics, and is regarded as one of the most influential living economists in his time. Nikiforov has written seven books in his career, the most popular being “ _The Impossible Doctrine_ ”, for which he received a Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. He is also the co-author of “ _Microeconomics: eleventh edition_ ”, amongst many others.

As of 2017, Nikiforov has quit his job as professor of economics in Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It is unclear as to whether Nikiforov has plans to return to academia.

 **Contents**  [hide]

1 Early life and education  
2 Academic career  
3 Author  
4 Economic views  
5 Personal views  
6 Awards and accomplishments  
7 Retirement from academia  
8 Public speculation on retirement  
9 Published works  
10 See also  
11 Further reading  
12 References  
13 External links

 

 

**MEET 10 OF THE WORLD’S MOST INFLUENTIAL CONTEMPORARY ECONOMISTS | BUSINESS TODAY**

  1. Viktor Nikiforov  
Age: 29  
Net worth: $230 million  
Country: Russia



While still a graduate student in Harvard University, Nikiforov discovered the Nikiforov paradox, which has since revolutionised our understanding of game theory. His nonfiction book “The Impossible Doctrine”, which was originally published in Russian, has been translated to twenty-eight different languages and won him numerous prizes including the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. In his brief tenure at MIT, Viktor won twenty-two international awards and co-authored five books, two of which ranked number #1 in Amazon’s list of bestselling nonfiction books for a total of seventeen consecutive weeks.

In 2017, Nikiforov announced his resignation from academia, and plans to make an abrupt career switch to writing romance novels.

 

 

**Exclusive interview: Viktor Nikiforov explains his shocking career choices  
Business Insider**

**Li Chang Ho. Feb 2, 2017, 12:42PM**

After a whirlwind month of touring for his latest book, “New Age Poverty”, Viktor Nikiforov has called it quits.

“I don’t regret the time and effort I’ve spent over the past ten-odd years in academia, but I am looking to developing my career as a romance novelist from now on,” he said.

As a previous professor in Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Viktor has made innumerable contributions to the field of Economics. When asked about the reason for his departure, Viktor said, “As an academic researcher, my primary objective is that of continuous discovery. I fear that I am unable to do so anymore.”

Why romance novelist? To this, Viktor’s reply was, “So much of my work deals with a macroscopic understanding of the human condition. I wish to spend some time to understand the human psyche at its most trivial and mundane.”

Viktor graduated from Moscow State University at the age of 16. He later spent two years completing his graduate degree in Harvard University, during which he produced the bulk of his work that would later be regarded as one of the most revolutionary economic theorems of our time. Since then, he has been consistently voted amongst the top 10 most influential contemporary economists by The Economist from 2010 to 2017.

When asked about his concrete plans for 2017, Viktor said, “I wish to spend some time to travel and gain inspiration for my new novel, and take things slowly from there. I look forward to trying out new and different experiences in the year ahead.”

He clarifies that he has no long term plans to return to his job in MIT, although he describes his previous working environment as conducive, rigorous, and collegiate. “I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to both the organisation, and my colleagues, for their invaluable help over the past seven years,” Viktor said, when asked to comment on his tenure in MIT.

Whatever the reason for his departure, there is little doubt that academia will mourn the loss of one of its brightest and most promising young economists of the twenty-first century.

**More:   Viktor Nikiforov   The Viktor Paradox**

 

 

_I wish to spend some time to understand the human psyche at its most trivial and mundane._

_I look forward to trying out new and different experiences in the year ahead._

Yuuri snaps his laptop shut. He thinks that he might throw up.

For the rest of the day in hospital, he turns these two sentences, over and over, in his head, till he feels sick to his stomach. He knows that he should probably think about it rationally, maybe even entertain the notion of talking to Viktor about it, but his heart is dancing in funny little beats in his chest and his hands feel stone cold.

Suddenly everything makes sense: Viktor’s bizarre interest in Yuuri’s life, his refusal to broach the topic of his work, the way he’d look at Yuuri and then suddenly turn to scribble down illegible Russian words on scrap pieces of paper; Yuuri really should have known. Viktor’s interested in Yuuri’s life, because Yuuri is nothing if not the king of mundaneness. Viktor chose Yuuri as a roommate not  _in spite_  of how deeply uninteresting Viktor finds Yuuri, but  _because_  of it. It’s a sick twist of irony: that his  _boringness_  should be so entertaining to Viktor, who’d grown tired of how illustrious his life had been. Dull is the new exciting, and all that.

Where he had been peering at Viktor through his cloud of infatuation, Viktor had regarded him with nothing more than the cool, clinical gaze of a researcher. To Yuuri, Viktor was a crush. To Viktor, Yuuri might as well have been a tadpole in Viktor’s third grade science project.

Distantly, he hopes that he’d provided Victor with whatever  _new and different_   _experience_  Viktor required to write his stupid romance novel. He congratulates himself on unknowingly providing someone with six months of ceaseless entertainment.

He grits his teeth and tells himself that it’s fine, it’s really,  _really_  fine.  _The human psyche at its most mundane_ ; it’s not like Yuuri has ever pretended to be anything else.

 

 

Viktor comes home that night bearing two takeaway bowls of katsudon, and a ridiculously triumphant expression on his face.

“I did it, Yuuri,” Viktor singsongs. “I found the  _one shop_  in the whole of Detroit that sells decent katsudon, you have no idea how hard it--“ Then he sees the expression on Yuuri’s face, and stops midway through his sentence.

“Yuuri? Yuuri, are you okay? Are you  _ill_?” Viktor asks frantically, his face twisting into something that looks almost frantic. Yuuri allows himself a fleeting moment of delusion that it’s frantic  _concern_ , but dismisses the thought as quickly as it comes.

“Viktor--”

Yuuri spent the entire afternoon rehearsing his speech in front of Viktor; he’d ran a thousand different versions of it through his head, tried to come up with something that could adequately convey the degree of confusion and hurt he was going through. In the last moment, gripped by a wave of sheer mortification, he'd contemplated hiding the articles away and never mentioning them ever again. 

And yet--he isn't the Yuuri on the plane anymore. The Yuuri now--there's a small part of him that's staunchly rooted in the belief that, surely, all the times they spent together should have counted for something. Even if Viktor had been playing along, surely he would've felt  _something_. Yuuri doesn't know if he's being pathetic, or brave, or just straight out delusional. He looks at Viktor, who's standing in front of him with his eyes wide and palms spread open, and thinks,  _you taught me this. You taught me to do this._

“A reporter from a newspaper came by today,” Yuuri says, and every syllable feels like he's pulling teeth. 

He shoves the article from Business Insider interview towards Viktor, and there’s a momentary flash of recognition in Viktor’s eyes that gives way to blind panic.

“Yuuri--Yuuri, I’m so sorry, I didn’t--I should’ve told you--I wanted to--“

“But you didn’t,” Yuuri tells him, because it was what mattered the most.

For once, Viktor is speechless, and Yuuri's heart sinks; he'd hoped that Viktor would somehow, miraculously, explain the entire situation away. His instincts are screaming at him to run away from this mortifying situation, run as far away as possible so that he'd never see the light of the world again, but Yuuri finds it in him to stay rooted on the ground. He tilts his chin up, looks into Viktor's eyes. It is both a plea and a challenge. 

 

“Yuuri, I want to explain myself,” Viktor says; his lips are trembling, and he is very pale. “It--it isn’t like what it seems.”

“You can’t hide something like this from me and tell me that it’s not what it seems,” Yuuri retorts, incredulous. 

“No, you’re right, I can’t!” Viktor shouts, then abruptly lowers his voice. Viktor runs his fingers through his hair, tugs at it, something that he only does when he’s exceptionally stressed. It should make Yuuri feel relieved that Viktor actually cares enough to feel stressed out about the whole situation, or smug that he’s not the only one feeling the hurt, but it doesn’t, not even in the slightest. It only makes him want to cry. “ _But can you at least hear me out_.”

“Fine,” Yuuri says. “ _Fine_ , I’m listening.”

“It’s true that I was looking for, for inspiration,” Viktor says, wincing visibly at the last word. “And it’s true that I wanted to experience something different. I don’t deny any of it. I thought that being with you would inspire me to write, that much was true, but you were never just something to be  _used_ , Yuuri. You were more than that.

“I meant everything I said in the interview. I’d reached the peak of my career long ago, and I knew that I could never come up with anything better than what I’d came up with in Harvard. Of course I could continue churning out economic models, but a lot of my work felt… aimless, like I was just helping the rich get richer, which was, it was so pointless, to me. At one point I just thought--on a whim, I have no idea what possessed me--fuck it, I was going to throw all of that aside and go for something as far removed from what I was doing as possible, so that I would never have to go back to doing that again. That was when I decided to switch career tracks, write some romance novels, because why not, right. They were complete trash, by the way. It drove my publisher--Yakov--nuts, although I couldn’t really have cared less.

“The day I met you on the plane, I was headed for a conference in Detroit, the last one I’d attend before retiring from academia altogether. When the guy collapsed next to me, and when you first walked down that aisle towards us, I, I didn’t think that much about it, to be honest. I just assumed that you were a doctor or something. And then you started freaking out a little when the guy’s seizure didn’t stop, and I realised that you were only a student, and that you looked pretty much like you were going to pass out yourself. But you saved him in the end, and then you came and sat down next to me and--

“You amazed me, Yuuri. I knew you were scared, but I hadn’t realised exactly  _how_  scared until you started drinking and everything started spilling out; you were scared and yet you did it anyway. And the rawness of your emotions that day was--there was  _nothing_  mundane about that. It was the truest anyone had been in front of me for a very, very long time.”

Yuuri doesn’t know what to say, doesn’t even know where to look, because Viktor is crying.

“You fascinated me, Yuuri. After our encounter on the plane, I checked into my hotel and, for the first time, wrote a draft that Yakov didn’t dismiss as complete bullshit. The week later I decided to contact your landlady. I should’ve told you about everything else in the beginning, but I didn’t, which was inexcusable. But I--I never intended to hurt you, or use you only as a tool. I wanted to preserve the same relationship we had; I assumed--and it was wrong of me to assume, I know--but I thought that I would’ve been more accessible to you as Viktor, the man on the plane, and not Viktor, the academic.”

“But that was just that  _one time_ ,” Yuuri says, in spite of himself; now he feels like a fraud, which is patently ridiculous, because  _he’s_  the one who’s been kept in the dark for six whole months. “After you moved in I was just, just going about my life in the apartment, I didn’t do anything heroic, or grand, or exciting, or--“

“Yuuri,” Viktor cuts in, and he sounds truly exasperated now, “Yuuri, you  _didn’t have to_. You being you--it was enough. Being together with you, spending time together--it wasn’t just a  _phase_  I was going through for the sake of an  _experience_."

Viktor's taking in deep, rattling breaths now; his face is flushed bright red. Yuuri has never seen him like this before. 

"Did you think it was mundane, to me? Because it wasn’t. But if you think that--that eating katsudon together is mundane, and watching movies and saying good morning and goodnight to each other is mundane then fine,  _fine_. I’ll pick mundane over everything else. Any. Single. Day.”

Viktor stops talking, exhales sharply and stares straight into Yuuri’s eyes, as if daring Yuuri to contradict him.

Then--so quickly that Yuuri has no idea who moved first--they’re kissing; Yuuri digs his fingers into the small of Viktor’s back, feels the pressure of Viktor’s chest, the steady  _thump thump thump_  of Viktor’s heart against his own and thinks: yes, this is what he had wanted, ever since that stupid drunken conversation on that stupid plane ride; yes, this is everything that he was looking for.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Viktor murmurs when they finally break apart and Viktor’s resting his head on Yuuri’s shoulder, his mouth pressed softly against the angle of Yuuri’s jaw.

"Kissing's great and all," Yuuri says, after a while, "but you know it isn't going to solve everything, right?"

At this, Viktor tenses, but Yuuri reaches out and slowly, gently, wipes the wetness off Viktor's cheeks. 

"But we can sort it out together," Yuuri tells him. "We've got time."

This close, Yuuri catches the scent of sweat and vanilla softener and Viktor’s aftershave, remembers them from all the times Viktor had draped his arms around Yuuri’s shoulders and gallantly sacrificed his good sweater as Yuuri wept to the closing theme of Spirited Away. When Viktor runs his calloused fingers across Yuuri’s wrist, Yuuri thinks about the month before, when Yuuri had fallen sick and Viktor had sat by Yuuri’s bedside the whole night, fussing over Yuuri and rubbing his thumb over Yuuri’s knuckles in little repetitive motions. When Viktor’s rattled breathing finally quietens down to something slower, shallower, Yuuri closes his eyes, and allows himself the luxury of holding Viktor in his arms, like this, for a little while longer.

“Yuuri. Stay with me, won’t you?”

“Yes,” Yuuri says, and it feels a lot like coming home.

 

 

 

Etc., etc.:

 **Phichit:**  someone called viktor just followed me on IG im assuming it’s ur bf  
**Phichit:**  oh my goD WHY DOES HE HAVE 103K FOLLOWERS  
(Missed whatsapp call from Phichit)  
**Phichit:**  W  
**Phichit:**  T  
**Phichit:**  f  
**Phichit:**  W T F YUURI KATSUKI WHY DIDN’T TELL ME YOU WERE DATING VIKTOR NIKIFOROV  
**Phichit:**  MA IM FAMOUS  
**Phichit:**  you owe me SOMANY EXPLANATIONS YUURI. SO MANY  
(Missed whatsapp call from Phichit)  
**Phichit:**  he  
**Phichit:**  he’s liking all my photos and videos of you LOL  
**Phichit:**  he JUST LIKED THE ONE WITH THE GEESE

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> (trigger warning for: seizures, throwing up, needles)
> 
> *writes a fic about twenty-somethings dealing with burnout, identity crises, lowkey anxiety, and all round questionable decision making skills based on very relateable anime characters* me??? projecting??? what are you talking about, i would _never_
> 
>  
> 
> (also on [tumblr](http://carafinn.tumblr.com/post/166419294597/coming-home-again))


End file.
